It's occurred to me over the last year that I'm not one person, and I don't know that I ever have been. My mind wanders from day to day on trivial things that shouldn't matter, but many times at night my mind reflects on the day and/or days gone by and I have this longing to be spiritual and long for peace in my heart. By the time morning comes, I've forgotten most everything from the day before, and every day starts a new cycle. I've gotten used to is I suppose, but it seems somewhat disturbing when I actually think about it.
I'm fairly certain that the trivial worries are the 5 year old in me. I'm always worried about the little things, whether it be at home, school or work. I dread going to work sometimes just because of the possibility that my boss won't be in a good mood that day. I dread going to school sometimes, especially if I skipped a day of school. And why did I skip a day of school you might ask? -because the 5 year old in me wanted to sleep in, or didn't wake up to the six or seven alarms that I have set, or just said "screw you, I don't want to go to school today!" At the same time, the 5 year old wants to have fun and loves being around people all the time and staying up late and playing games and doing whatever she wants to. This has to be the fun part of me--if indeed there is a fun part. The 5 year old laughs at all the jokes, plays video games, sits on facebook for long periods of time, collects movies, hates waking up in the morning, and falls asleep on the couch every night cause she hates her bed. The 5 year old also hates cleaning anything and procrastinates on everything and anything possible.
Now on the other side--the 50 year old needs her alone time. She likes to go to the chapel once in awhile to meditate and crys during movies. She loves tradition and can't stand change of any sort. The 50 year old gets annoyed with people in general, especially when they don't pay attention to something important. The 50 year old also hates taking care of drunk people because she finds most of them obnoxious. She is also very sentimental and holds on to documents, programs, pictures and newspaper clippings that mean a lot at the time. This of course means that the fifty year old is a pack rat. The only thing the 5 and 50 year old have in common is that they HATE getting up in the morning. The 50 year old is simply too tired to get out of bed and it hurts to move sometimes. (and yes, I realize this only gets worse as time goes on) At least the 50 year old knows that she has to get out of bed at some point to get stuff done.
Sometimes the 5 year old and 50 year old work together though, like when I compose. The 5 year old is the ridiculously creative one and the 50 year old pulls all of that creativity together and puts it on paper (or just into Sibelius). The 5 year old is the one that goes out and meets people, makes friends, has fun with them, spends money like a true Bohemian and the 50 year old is the one that takes care of her friends, pays for some of her friends who don't have any money when they go out to eat, and worries about the bills when they come. The 5 year old bought the Ipod to listen to music and play games, while the 50 year old bought the Ipod to listen to music and buy applications that would help keep her life in order, especially with the horrible memory skills.
Besides the fact that I'm not quite as bad as Robert Schumann--yet, the real question is-- how does the 26 year old deal with all of this?!
Aww Laura, you don't fail at college. Not a bit!! There are people here in their 50's who are getting their undergrad. It took me 6 years to graduate; I pretty much failed an entire year at BH. Even after getting better at this college thing my overall cum is just above a 2.7. But, I did it! I even have a shot at grad school, God willing. :)
ReplyDeleteI'm a lot of people too. I'm outgoing in public but shy to talk about myself, fearless sometimes and really paranoid at other times, old-fashioned in my expectations of how one should treat people, and decidedly not old-fashioned in terms of humor. People are complicated, I think.
I agree that balance is tricky; I think it is for everybody. It just finally dawned on me this week that being organized doesn't have to mean being a brutal taskmaster-- or worse, boring. You can schedule fun stuff too! I leave my evenings free to do whatever.
My favorite organizing/productivity apps are 2Do (friggin love 2Do), convert units, Metron (metronome/pitch pipe-I think you have this one?), flashcards (you can make your own flashcards on anything you want!) and Sleep Machine (white noise generator; great if you get distracted by people talking).
Laura, you are cool and I like you. I will miss singing in choir with you, but I am happy for the power of the Internets.